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IAPR-TC11: Newsletter 2017/03

March, 2017

Things continue to be busy in the TC-11 community! Probably the most
pressing announcement concerns the ICDAR 2017 paper submission deadline,
which has been extended to April 1st (abstracts) and April 7th (full
papers).

As ICDAR is now fast approaching, various other ICDAR-related items are
included in this issue. These include announcements for competitions,
workshops, tutorials, the ICDAR Awards and the ICDAR Doctoral
Consortium.

This month's newsletter also includes the first announcement for DAS
2018, which will be held in Vienna, Austria. Additional details will be
provided in upcoming newsletters. Other meeting announcements include
the 1st Workshop on Human-Document Interaction, and the Conference of
the Institute of the Americas.

In this issue you will also find information about Special Issues in
IJDAR and IEEE THMS pertinent to our community. These Special Issues
concern deep learning (submissions are open) and handwriting/drawing in
interactive systems (now available). Also, good news for those
interested in subscribing to IJDAR: the Editors have negotiated a
substantially reduced subscription fee for IAPR members.

As we experienced certain technical problems with the server at the time of the abstract submission deadline, plus the announcement of the abstract deadline extension did not reach everyone as intended, we would like to extend the abstract deadline until April 1st which was the current date for full paper submission. Due to this extension, the deadline of full paper submission is postponed to April 7th. The following are the updated deadlines and no further extension will be granted.

Call for Papers: 1st International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction

HDI 2017 will focus on how humans interact with written information around them, and the interfaces between users and documents. The term document is meant in the wider possible sense, to refer to any physical object that carries written information.

The workshop aims to create a space for debate between the Document Image Analysis and Recognition and the Human-Computer Interaction communities, and it is motivated by a number of recent developments that point to a coming change of paradigm in the way we interact with written information around us.

Fresh paper submissions as well as re-submissions of improved versions of rejected ICDAR papers (submitted along with the original reviews) are welcome. The topics of interest include among others:

Augmented documents

Linking physical and digital content

Reading behaviour analysis

Human factors

User experience and usability

Wearable sensors in reading

Interaction for facilitating Document Image Analysis (teaching reading systems through the way humans interact with written information)

Call for Papers:2017 Conference of the Institute of the Americas

Conference Dates: October 18-20, 2017Location: La Rochelle, France

Abstracts Due: April 15, 2017

Scientific Committee Decisions: 15 May, 2017

Submission of Full Papers: 31 July, 2017

The 2017 conference of the Institute of the Americas proposes to explore the evolutions of practices and knowledge in the field of the human and social sciences closely related to the development of digital techniques and their applications. This edition will specifically focus on the digital humanities and digital history concepts, and could thus organize its reflections around the following avenues:

New heuristic tools: the multi-disciplinarity and collaborative dimension in American studies.

Political, financial and institutional issues of Digital Humanities in American Studies

From the Americas to the Atlantic and the Pacific: transnational studies in the Digital Age

The role of legal and management sciences

Opening the field to social demand: addressing issues of pedagogy, heritage management, and the mediatization of scientific production

Abstracts (Cambria, size 12 font, 1.5 line spacing) will include:

a title, the names of the authors, their institutional affiliation and a five-line summary of their research activities;

an abstract of approximately 450 words;

5 keywords

The file name should be 'IdA2017' followed by the surname of the author or first author. The proposal may be written in French, English, Spanish or Portuguese. It will be examined by two members of the Scientific Committee. The final papers should be sent two months before the conference to the following mailing address in order to be transmitted to the scientific committee: colloque2017@institutdesameriques.fr.

The Organizing Committee is committed to achieving a balance between doctoral candidates, young and confirmed researchers. The conference is open to all disciplines.

ICDAR 2017: Accepted Workshops and Tutorials - (repost)

Nine workshops and three tutorials will be offered at ICDAR 2017. You can find the names and organizers for each below. Please direct any questions to the workshop and/or tutorial chairs (contact information is provided below).

The goal of this competition is to improve/denoise OCR-ed texts, based on an original corpus of OCRed documents composed of 12M characters (2.1M tokens) aligned with their corresponding Gold Standard, with an equal share of English- and French-written materials. There are two independent subtasks: 1) Detection of OCR errors, and 2) Correction of OCR errors. A competition report including both the description of the methodology and a comparative analysis of participants' performances will be submitted for publication at ICDAR 2017.

ICDAR 2017 Competitions : An Overview - (repost)

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the ICDAR'17 that will be held in Kyoto (November, 10th-15th) will organize a set of competitions dedicated to a large set of document analysis problems. You are cordially invited to participate in this scientific event that will be a very good opportunity to objectively compare the quality of algorithms in different categories of challenges. Please consider submitting your algorithm(s) to all competitions in the same category, as we asked the individual competition organizers to synchronize their evaluation metrics, if possible. You will find below the different categories of competitions, and the URL of their respective website, that will allow you to get all the required information for participating.

Call for Nominations: ICDAR 2017 Awards (repost)

Nominations Due: May 15, 2017

The ICDAR Award Program is an established program designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of Document Analysis and Recognition in one or more of the following areas:

Research

Training of students

Research/Industry interaction

Service to the profession

Every two years, two awards categories are presented. Namely, the IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award (less than 40 years old at the time the award is made), and the IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award. Each award will consist of a token gift and a suitably inscribed certificate. The recipient of the Outstanding Achievements award will be invited to give the opening key note speech at the ICDAR 2015 conference, introduced by the recipient from the previous conference.

Nominations are invited for the ICDAR 2017 Awards in both categories.

The nomination packet should include the following:

A nominating letter (1 page) including a brief citation to be included in the certificate.

A brief vitae (2 pages) of the nominee highlighting the accomplishments being recognized.

A nomination is usually put forward by a researcher (preferably from a different Institution than the nominee) who is knowledgeable of the scientific achievements of the nominee, and who organizes letters of support.

Submission procedure is strictly confidential, and self-nominations are not allowed.

Please send nominations packets electronically to the Awards Committee Co-Chairs Dimosthenis Karatzas ([matilto:dimos@cvc.uab.es dimos@cvc.uab.es]) and Bart Lamiroy (bart.lamiroy@loria.fr). The deadline for receipt of nominations is May 15th, 2017 but early submissions are strongly encouraged.

ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium (repost)

In 2011, the first Doctoral Consortium in the Document Analysis community was organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). This has led to successful successor events at ICDAR 2013 and ICDAR 2015. The tradition of having a Doctoral Consortium as a satellite event to the ICDAR main conference will be continued at ICDAR 2017 in Kyoto, Japan.

The goal of the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium is to create an opportunity for Ph.D. students to test their research ideas, present their current progress and future plans, and receive constructive criticism and insights related to their future work and career perspectives. A mentor (a senior researcher who is active in the field) will be assigned to each student to provide individual feedback. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present an overview of their research plan during a special poster session.

Participation in the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will be limited to 25 students. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit their application by July 15 (submission procedure to be announced). The Doctoral Consortium Chairs will then review all applications received. Preference will be given to students who are at a stage in their studies most likely to benefit (i.e., they have identified a research direction and published some initial results, but the thesis is not yet set in stone).

Participation to the Doctoral Consortium will be free for all accepted students, i.e., there will be no extra registration fees!

The ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will take place the day before the main conference, i.e., on Sunday, November 12.

IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members

IAPR is pleased to announce a partnership agreement with Springer, the publisher of IJDAR, the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition. This new agreement will allow IAPR members to receive a subscription to the electronic version of IJDAR at a discount of nearly 50%. For additional details, see the links below:

The April 2017 issue of IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems is concerned with interactive systems that incorporate handwriting and/or drawing. The Special Issue aims to bring together some of the most valuable research contributions and applicable solutions in the field of drawing and handwriting processing for human–machine interaction.

Twelve papers are included in the special issue concerning diverse topics such as signature verification, user-centered document segmentation, sketch retrieval, combined speech and handwriting entry, emotion and handwriting, and dysgraphia.

The issue is available online now: THMS April 2017. Please spread the word, and take a moment to peruse the Table of Contents.

IJDAR Special Issue:Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (repost)

In recent years, applying Deep Learning techniques to Document Analysis and Recognition (DAR) tasks has produced significant performance gains. These have included impressive advances in handwriting recognition, word-spotting in document images, document segmentation, and text detection in natural scenes.

This special issue aims to report new advances in DAR using deep learning methods. Articles presenting reviews, perspectives, new methods and applications in DAR are cordially invited. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to uses of Deep Learning for:

Open Position in Handwritten Text Recognition at Uppsala University (Sweeden) - (updated)

At Uppsala University we are seeking persons who would like to work in the area of handwritten text recognition. The positions will allow you to work with machine learning algorithms on high performance computers. We are currently seeking one PhD student that would like to work in an interesting and expanding research environment.

Call for Contributions: To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, Richard Zanibbi (rxzvcs@rit.edu). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements/updates/reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC-11 community.